For centuries, fishermen have been looking for ways to improve their chances for catching fish. Over the years, there have been developments in lures, rods, reels, and a variety of other equipment that have made fishermen more successful. Over the past two decades, however, sonar fish finding systems have become increasingly available and fishermen have taken advantage of the benefits those systems offer.
Sonar fish finding systems are available in a variety of forms and functionalities, which give fisherman a broad choice as to what product fits their specific needs. In more recent times, sonar fish finding systems that can pair the sonar fish finding device together with the numerous wireless computing devices that fishermen and others already use every day have become available to the public. Such an arrangement allows a fisherman to utilize an already existing display screen rather than having to have one that is dedicated to the sonar fish finding alone.
These sonar fish finding devices currently available, however, do have limitations, specifically in relation to the sonar fish finding devices that pair a sonar fish finder with a wireless computing device. Currently available sonar fish finding systems do not offer the capacity for fishermen to track real-time fishing hotspots. Such a limitation can decrease a fisherman's ability to successfully catch fish, as the fisherman is unaware where fish are actually located and therefore must use valuable time to search for the fish.
Further, currently available sonar fish finding systems do a considerable amount of data processing on-board the sonar device. This on-board processing requires significant processing hardware which, in turn, requires increased battery capacity. Therefore, these kinds of devices tend to be either bulky or have battery life of only a few hours. In order to enable all day use on a single charge, the size, complexity, and power of the electronics in the sonar device must be significantly reduced. However, reducing the processing power of the electronics brings its own challenges. Memory capacity and processing speed constraints inherent in low-power electronics impose serious limitations on the capabilities of the sonar device.
Sonar devices work by emitting a sonic signal which echoes or reflects off objects in the water. A sensor records these reflections for processing to find fish or objects in the water. In certain situations, the memory capacity of low-power electronics is insufficient for storing the data set of the whole reflected signal. This can limit the ability of the sonar device to see to the end of the full range of the sonic signal. However, even under tight memory constraints, it is possible to process the whole range of the reflected signal without having to store the whole data set at once. Methods of allowing for full service data processing, even where limited bandwidth, memory, and processing power are available are generally applicable to many types of data processing.
Even with low power electronics, sending information over a standard wireless connection can cause a significant drain on the battery, reducing battery life. Power consumption can be further reduced by using, for example, a Bluetooth Smart (BLE) connection. However, BLE imposes constraints on the system that make sending large amounts of data somewhat difficult. This problem can be addressed through careful construction of BLE data packets.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for a sonar fish finding system and method that allows for a small sonar device, roughly the size of a fishing bobber, with all-day battery life. This need can be met by using low-power electronics, a BLE wireless connection, and clever engineering to squeeze the maximum amount of useful data through limited resources. Useful data is further provided by gathering data from multiple sonar devices at a remote computing system that does not have the processing constraints of the sonar device and determining fishing hotspots based on both current and historical data. Fishing hotspot information can then be sent back to a wireless computing device. These and other features and advantages of the present invention will be explained and will become obvious to one skilled in the art through the summary of the invention that follows.